1. Field
The invention relates to a system for simulating a multi-antenna radio channel, a method and a computer program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radio channel simulations play an important role in testing multi-antenna radio devices, such as MIMO-based (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) base stations and mobile terminals. A typical radio channel simulation system involves a transmitter device with M transmit antennas, a receiver device with N receive antennas, and a radio channel emulator implementing an M×N channel model to the transmit signals. The transmitter device and the receiver device carry out transmit and receive algorithms, respectively.
In a typical radio channel simulation, channel coefficients are provided to the radio channel simulations system, which channel coefficients characterize radio paths between each transmit-receive antenna pair. The physical effects of the channel coefficients on propagating signals are implemented with a processing network comprising a great amount of hardware resources, such as processors, delay elements, multipliers and summing elements.
The hardware resources form the primary limiting factor with respect to accuracy and flexibility of the radio channel simulations. Therefore, it is relevant to consider improvements regarding radio channel simulation systems.